Demons Read online

  Not just for my sake, for Vic’s and for our son’s. You do understand?”

  “I understand that what’s brewing here is pretty volatile, Mrs. Runyon-”

  “Yes. Exactly.”

  “-and that you could make it worse by becoming personally involved with Nedra and this champion of hers.”

  “Are you saying it’s better I don’t know who they are? That I just let things go along as they have?”

  “No. I’m advising caution, that’s all.”

  “I intend to be cautious. Very. But I have to know. I’m going to know, one way or another. If you won’t help me-”

  She broke off because there were running footsteps on the stairs outside, then heavy on the porch. A key rattled; the front door opened and then banged shut. A young male voice called, “Mom? You here?”

  “In the living room, Matt.”

  A teenage version of Kay Runyon appeared in the doorway. He was sixteen or seventeen, his blond hair worn in a tight bristle cut, his clothing a pair of rumpled cords and one of those blue-and-white long-sleeved sweatshirts baseball players wear. He looked like a ballplayer: lean, rangy, long-armed, and strong. In one hand he carried a plastic sack tied off at the top and full of something that couldn’t be very heavy.

  “I got the lint,” he said. “You want it in… oh.”

  He’d spotted me, and it worked an immediate transformation on him. He froze in place, his body tensing.

  Kay Runyon said, “It’s all right, Matt. This man’s here to help us.” She made introductions, and her son-Matthew, she said formally-unbent enough to come over and shake my hand, quick and hard. But the tenseness remained in him, and he had nothing to say to me. He turned back to his mother, jiggling the sack.

  “You want me to put this stuff in the studio?”

  “Yes. Go ahead, we’re almost finished here.”

  He nodded and went out without looking at me again.

  I said, “Lint?”

  “Dryer lint. There are two Laundromats in the area that save it for me. Matt collects it when they have a sackful.”

  “What do you use it for?”

  “Didn’t Joe tell you? I’m an artist-I do representational and impressionistic paintings, using dryer lint as a central ingredient.”

  “Uh, I see.”

  Ghost of a smile. “It’s an established modern technique,” she said. “That’s one of my better efforts on the wall behind you.”

  I looked. Furry geometrical designs arranged on a snowy white field, none of them quite touching one another, each in a slightly different shade of orange. “It’s very good,” I said. I had no idea if it was good or not; what I know about art you could hide in a spoonful of dryer lint.

  “Thank you.”

  One of those little awkward silences then, the kind that develop between strangers in unrelaxed circumstances. Thick quiet had reclaimed the house. I still wanted to get up and walk out, but I didn’t do it.

  “He knows, of course,” Kay Runyon said abruptly.

  “Matt?”

  “Yes. What’s going on with his father, the phone calls, all of it. We don’t have secrets in this house. Didn’t used to have secrets, anyway.”

  Another small silence. She looked at me steadily, waiting, as tense now as her son had been.

  It’s all right, Matt. This man’s here to help us.

  Well, somebody had to, right? And what difference did it make to me, really, who paid my fees and what kind of work I did as long as it was worthwhile. I got out my notebook.

  ***

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER, out in the car, I didn’t feel quite so nobly philosophical. I thought: Obsessive affair, harassing phone calls, not-so-veiled threats, people in pain living on the edge-a situation simmering with all sorts of explosive possibilities. Plus a Dreamsicle living room and paintings made with dryer lint. I must be crazy to get mixed up in a thing like this.

  Right.

  Just another day in the asylum…

  CHAPTER 2

  AT FIVE-FIFTEEN THAT EVENING I was legally parked at a meter on Second Street, between Brannan and Townsend. It had taken me twenty-five minutes of cruising around, and a little fast maneuvering to ace out an irate woman in a Cadillac who also wanted the space-and at that I considered myself fortunate. I’d been prepared to do a lot of hovering and/or park illegally to maintain surveillance on the parking garage just down the block. The garage was where Victor Runyon kept his car-a maroon ‘91 BMW, his wife had told me-while he was in his office around the corner on Brannan.

  This was an area of the city that had changed radically over the past couple of decades. Once its streets and narrow alleys and old brick and stone and wood buildings had been home to light industry, to ship’s chandleries and marine supply outfits that catered to San Francisco’s now-moribund shipping trade. In those days it had been known as South of the Slot, “slot” being old-timer’s parlance for Market Street. As the port declined, so did the district. In the sixties and early seventies, some of the industrial outfits had closed down or moved out, and the area had degenerated into an adjunct to Skid Row: flophouses, cheap bars, empty buildings and warehouses, heavy drug use in and around South Park. Then the city fathers, in a rare exercise of good judgment, had stepped in and started an aggressive urban renewal program; and farsighted developers, who had correctly predicted the real estate boom of the mid-seventies, had bought up property and begun tearing down some of the worst of the derelicts and putting up new buildings, and refurbishing the “quaint” old brick warehouses into gentrified office and showroom space. Clothiers and people involved in the interior design trade moved in; so did architects and artists and food and entertainment entrepreneurs. Now what you had was a burgeoning San Francisco version of New York’s SoHo, replete with a similar trendy name: SoMa, short for South of Market. By day it was a diverse “mixed-use” jumble of printing outfits, auto repair shops, social service agencies, pawnshops, transient hotels and senior citizens’ residences peacefully coexisting with art galleries, factory-outlet clothing and jewelry stores, gourmet food and wine shops, and a variety of white-collar offices. By night it was a racy Bohemian blend of restaurants, comedy clubs, and gay leather bars and straight dancing clubs along Folsom Street’s so-called Miracle Mile.

  I’m not a big advocate of change, but in this case I approved of the South of Market metamorphosis. I could remember the good old days when the area had had a crusty seaman’s flavor, but I could also remember the bad old days when it had been the domain of crumbling buildings and crumbling humanity. Mindless change-the tearing down of the functional old in favor of the glittery, too-often impermanent new-is one thing; reclamation and self-preservation by surgery is another. South of the Slot was dead. Long live SoMa.

  The streets were crowded at the moment, with people leaving the offices and galleries and showrooms for the day. I couldn’t have picked Victor Runyon out of the crowd streaming past, even though his wife had provided me with a clear color photo of him; but I didn’t have to try. He rarely left his office until five-thirty and usually not until six, she’d told me-a pattern he had evidently maintained even while in the throes of his affair with Nedra. Maybe so, but where stakeouts are concerned I prefer not to leave anything to chance. While hunting this parking space I’d called his office from my mobile phone, feigning a wrong number. He was there.

  I took his photo out again and had another look at it. Handsome guy: fair-skinned, though with brown hair that was on the curly side; ascetic features, soft mouth, gentle brown eyes under abnormally long lashes. There was intelligence and sensitivity in the face, but there was also weakness. I wondered again what went on inside the head of a man like him; how, if his wife was right about him, he could have emotionally paralyzed himself. I understood obsessive-compulsive behavior well enough; I had a mild case of it myself, where my job was concerned. But I recognized the symptoms when they appeared, had always been able to control them. A man who was so weak as to allow an obsession to
rule his emotions and then to undermine the foundations of his life was alien to me.

  Five-thirty. The crowds and the traffic on Townsend and on Second were thinning. It had been a clear, cool day, and now the sunlight was softening into a mellow gold where it lay in angles and patches on the streets and against buildings. Down along the Embarcadero, now that the remains of the earthquake-damaged Embarcadero Freeway had finally been torn down, that soft gold light on the bay, on the old pier sheds and the restored eminence of the Ferry Building, would be making the tourists sing the city’s praises. The coming night would be nice, too, one where lights and colors stand out in sharp relief against a darkness that seems as hard as black glass. From the balcony of Kerry’s apartment in Diamond Heights, you’d have a miles-wide view as far east as Mount Diablo.

  That was where I wanted to be tonight, up there with Kerry. I hadn’t seen much of her lately and I was lonesome. But given the fact that she’d been in conference when I called Bates and Carpenter shortly before five, and her secretary had said she had another meeting scheduled for six, my prospects were poor. Creative director for a small but aggressive ad agency is more than a full-time job; it’s a commitment that takes precedence over just about everything, including a normal personal life. I resented that, but I couldn’t argue with it. It was the same sort of commitment I’d made to my own profession a long time ago. Workaholics, Kerry and me. Chafing at the harness sometimes, sure, but knowing we wouldn’t be worth a damn unless we were wearing it.

  Six o’clock coming up. Not too many pedestrians now and I paid closer attention to the ones that passed on this side of the street, approaching from Brannan. Victor Runyon finally showed at three minutes after the hour: alone, walking briskly with a stiff-backed posture, eyes straight ahead. Tan gabardine suit, no tie, light tan trench coat unbuttoned and flapping like wings in the thin evening breeze. I shifted on the seat to get a better look at him as he passed. No expression on his ascetic face. Man with things on his mind… man with a purpose for tonight? I watched him enter the parking garage; then I started the car and backed up a little, to make sure I could get out of the space easily when the time came.

  It was not long before the maroon BMW appeared. Runyon was at the wheel; I could see him clearly when he braked before turning south toward Townsend. I eased out behind him.

  West on Townsend, driving neither fast nor slow, changing lanes only when it was necessary. I dropped back just far enough to be certain I could make every light he did. Right on Duboce, Duboce to Market, up Market to Twin Peaks. If he’d been going home to Ashbury Heights he’d have then taken Divisadero, or maybe Clayton halfway up; he didn’t turn on either street.

  I moved up closer to him as we neared the top of Market, where it becomes Portola Drive. Traffic was heavy and I didn’t want to lose him. He had no idea he was being followed; when you’ve been at the game as long as I have, you can tell when a subject is suspicious. Man with a purpose, all right-totally focused on getting to where he was headed. I could ride his bumper all the way, I thought, and still he wouldn’t have a clue that I was there.

  Beyond the big intersection at O’Shaughnessy, he turned left and swung around and back into the Tower shopping center. Going after groceries or liquor, maybe… but I was wrong about that. He parked in front of a florist shop, hurried inside while I hovered illegally in the vicinity, and reappeared a few minutes later with two huge, green-paper-wrapped bouquets of flowers.

  From the shopping center he drove back onto Portola and then turned downhill past the Youth Guidance Center and Laguna Honda Hospital. Another turn on Clarendon, a broad avenue that winds along the south side of Mount Sutro above one of the city’s reservoirs. Near the top of Clarendon he swung left into the moderately expensive residential district called Forest Hill.

  The streets up there were narrow and twisty, all the houses built along the west sides to take advantage of sweeping views of the ocean, the hills and the flatlands of the city’s western perimeter. The land on the right sides was too steep to build on; thick forest, dominated by eucalyptus, provided a rustic backdrop and the false illusion of country privacy. Attractive part of San Francisco to call home, as long as you didn’t subscribe to the theory that a catastrophic earthquake was going to hammer this old town someday. The houses-smallish, brick or stucco over wood, each with a two-car garage-were all on steep ground, and while there was bedrock up here, there was also plenty of loose topsoil; and too many homes had been built on wooden pilings instead of on concrete foundations dug into the hillside. A big enough shake, centered on the San Andreas Fault nearby, and everything on this hill could conceivably wind up in one disastrous heap on the flats below.

  Crestmont was the street Runyon wanted, the dead-end section beyond Devonshire. Secluded little pocket here, very woodsy, hidden away from the eyes and minds of 99 percent of the population. The houses and lots were larger and not quite as uniformly nondescript: wood-shingled or angularly modernistic with too much glass, set back far enough from the street so that most had small fenced-in decks or gardens in front.

  There was parking along the right side of the street, where the woods crowded down close against brick and concrete retaining walls. Runyon slowed, pulled his BMW to the curb opposite a wood-shingled house stained a dark red. I drove on past him without slowing down and without looking his way. At the circle where the street dead-ended I turned around and came back far enough to see him getting out of his car with the two bouquets of flowers. Then I parked, too, about fifty yards away.

  The dark-red house was his final destination. He opened a gate in the high wooden fence in front, using a key, and disappeared through it. I sat quiet for five minutes; he didn’t come back out. I quit the car then and walked over there, taking my time, like a man enjoying a casual stroll in his own neighborhood.

  The house didn’t look large from the street, but it was built on two levels. A wooden staircase ran down along the north side, to a landing and a door that would open into the lower level. Through the gap there that separated the red house from its northside neighbor, I could see Ocean Beach and the Pacific beyond; the westering sun made the water look like something out of a fiery biblical prophecy. The fence in front was too high to see over, but there were chinks between the gate boards that gave me glimpses of potted shrubs, an agave cactus in a wooden tub, a glass-topped table. Affixed to the gate were three block numerals made out of redwood: 770.

  On the south side of the fence there was a driveway that led into a smallish two-car garage. I paused there, pretended to stretch, and tried to determine if the garage was occupied. Couldn’t do it; the angle was wrong and the door was window-less. Not that it mattered much either way.

  I walked most of the distance to Devonshire, still taking my time. Nothing had changed at the red house when I came back past it. I sat in the car for another five minutes, to make the surveillance a full half-hour in length. Victor Runyon was still inside when I finally went away from there.

  ***

  OFFICES ARE LONELY PLACES at night. Mine in particular: big, half-empty loft in an old building on O’Farrell that is deserted after five-thirty, the other two tenants being the Slim-Taper Shirt Company on the second floor and Martin Quon’s Bay City Realtors on the ground floor. Ghosts walk here after dark-the ghosts of past cases and a friendship and partnership suddenly and inexplicably dead four months ago. I don’t come to the office at night much since Eberhardt walked out on me; I don’t like the ghosts or the emptiness. But tonight I had a reason, and I was not going to hang around long enough for the after-hours atmosphere to depress me.

  Maybe DeFalco’s right, I thought as I switched on my desk lamp. Maybe I ought to get out of here, rent a smaller, cheerier space in a better neighborhood. There was nothing keeping me in this gloomy garret except inertia. Eberhardt wasn’t coming back; even if he failed with his own agency, his pride wouldn’t let him. And my pride wouldn’t let me, either. Too much hurt, too much damage that couldn’t be und
one. Long, close friendships die hard; but once they’re dead, they’re better off buried for good.

  I dragged out my copy of the reverse city directory. Number 770 Crestmont was owned by Nedra Adams Merchant-sole ownership, no other property holder listed. Her occupation was given as graphics designer. She was also the sole occupant of the house, at least insofar as the city census was concerned.

  Nedra. Nedra Adams Merchant. Nice euphonious name. Nice person, too, even though she happened to be screwing a married man? Be a relief for all concerned if it turned out that way.

  I looked up her name in the Yellow Pages, under Graphics Designers. No listing. Operated her company under another name, or worked for somebody else. Or had some other source of income, and called herself a graphics designer as a cover. Easy enough to find out which way the wind blew by running a background check on her.

  Well, at least it hadn’t required much time or effort to identify the object of Victor Runyon’s obsession. If his nemesis, the mysterious telephone caller, was half as simple an ID, I could wash my hands of this whole unpleasant business in a day or so and get on with the routine and impersonal tasks of tracing skips and investigating insurance matters. And the next time Joe DeFalco came sucking around with one of his “favors,” I would cheerfully kick his ass out the door.

  ***

  WHEN I GOT TO MY FLAT in Pacific Heights I called Kerry again, this time at her apartment, and got her machine; she was still working, even though it was getting to be pretty late. After the beep I said, “Hi, babe. It’s eight-thirty; I’m home alone and pining away for you. Call me when you get in, if it’s not too late. We’ll talk dirty to each other.”

  I ate a light dinner and took to my lonely bed. Read for a while and then turned out the light and lay there hoping the phone would ring before I fell asleep.